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not discovered. For were there nothing to keep them in check then the 

 whole earth would soon be covered with scale bugs, and as they had 

 had full sway before man undertook their subjugation and had not 

 made such wonderful headway, there must have been something or other 

 that preyed upon them, and this something was what we wanted to dis- 

 cover and encourage. 



We found the Lace-winged fly was working for us, the Ichneumons, 

 Syrphus, and Tachina flies were doing good work, and, looking closer, 

 we found minute Chalcids preying upon our foes, and above all we found 

 the pretty little ladybirds devoting their whole existence as larva and 

 imago to thinning out the pests that were annoying and ruining us. 

 We had at last found the great solution of our troubles, and gradually 

 learned to place more reliance upon these little fellows than upon our 

 own personal efforts. They worked while we slept, when we were at 

 church or attending conventions; they never took a vacation or grew 

 tired; they reached under the foliage, in the crevices of the bark, and 

 impelled by hunger kept constantly at work eating up the pests that 

 ate up our profits. Since that time we have gradually been changing 

 our tactics in the fight, and while we are not yet prepared to abandon 

 our own methods altogether, we are relying more and more upon the 

 work of parasites in the orchard, and less and less upon artificial meas- 

 ures. The greater part of our - effort now is to discover new parasites 

 for the different scale insects — for the same parasites do not live upon 

 all — to study their habits, take measures for their propagation and dis- 

 tribution, and foster them by all means in our power. 



As fruit production is the principal industry and a great source of 

 wealth to our State, we have been forced to give greater attention to 

 this question of pests than any other section of the Union, if not of the 

 world. In the matter of fighting pests with parasites, California is the 

 pioneer, and other States and nations are benefiting by our experience. 

 The Sandwich Islands have secured the services of the most efficient 

 worker in this line — Mr. Albert Koebele — and his work promises to 

 redeem the islands from threatened ruin. In a letter from Joseph 

 Marsden, Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry for the islands, he 

 says of one introduction of Mr. Koebele's, a colony of which he was 

 kind enough to forward me: 



I do not know whether you have this insect ( Chryptolxmus montrouzieri) in California 

 or not, but it has worked wonders here. Our citrus trees were threatened with extinction 

 by a blight, which Mr. Riley named Rizzococcus, but which Mr. Maskell says is Dactyl- 

 opius albizzia. In the short space of six months this ladybird has nearly cleaned out all 

 the scale— so much so that I find it difficult to procure for my breeding-cages, from 

 which I have bred hundreds of colonies and distributed them all over the islands. This 

 insect is also doing good and rapid work in Kona on the Ptdvinaria, which has been 

 such a drawback to the coffee planters. It also feeds on the Dactylopius longifilis, which 

 is particularly numerous on the Samand trees. The larvae of the ladybird are now seen 

 by the tens of thousands covering the trunks of trees and the walls of buildings. I 

 would be much obliged if you would send me a colony of the Novius Koebelei, and if 

 possible a ladybird that will feed on the red spider ( Tetranychus telarius), which has 

 made its appearance on some coffee trees in the district of Hilo. Of course I will write 

 to Mr. Koebele to send me some insect that will prey upon it, but it will be some months 

 before I can obtain them from him. He is sending many ladybirds, but he is not yet 

 aware that the red spider has made its appearance here. 



Cape Colony has watched with interest the experiments of California, 

 and it, too, has followed our lead. 



And here I would contrast at once the work of Massachusetts, a com- 

 paratively non-fruit-growing State, and California, where fruit is a great 



